


a sweetness comes as if on loan

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Crossing Lines
Genre: Developing Friendships, Episode Tag, Gen, Hospitals, Ice Cream, Male-Female Friendship, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Sleep Deprivation, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 02:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15985331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: After the events of "Dragon," two members of the team find a brief respite in each other's company.





	a sweetness comes as if on loan

**Author's Note:**

> Why, I asked myself, is Inspector Constante at the hospital in the episode's final scene? Hence this ficlet, which contains brief allusions to the abduction and trafficking of women covered in the episode. 
> 
> Ellie's vocabulary is English, my spelling is currently American, and... I've _tried_ to follow whatever hybrid international English the show is using in talking about ice cream ( _ijsje_ , _gelato,_ , _la glace_ , who knows.) But I can't really figure out what hybrid international English the show wants everyone to be speaking to each other, so... the author throws her hands up in the air, and welcomes suggestions.

Ellie stands next to a sheet of glass, the noises of the hospital pharmacy vague behind her. On the other side of the window is the reunion her team brought about. She tries to imagine what their nights would have been together, these women, before their abduction. Complaining about work over slightly too much wine? Sharing clothes for dates? They’re close, not mere chance-met flatmates; it’s impossible not to see it. Weeping and bruised and exhausted, they cannot stop touching each other, cannot stop smiling. She wonders what it would be like, having such certainty, even emerging from nightmare.

“Come on,” says Constante; “I’ll take you home.”

Ellie shakes herself slightly, wipes away a stray tear. “I’m fine.” But she staggers a little as she turns, and finds his hand at her elbow.

“Of course you are. Let me do it anyway.”

She tells herself that she wouldn’t want to cry if she were less tired. She nods, pressing her lips together. “Okay.”

At the best of times, hospital corridors are strange places, she thinks. Now, the environment feels a bit surreal, a bit distant, fluorescent lights, beeping machines, busy staff all blending into a haze of light and noise and movement. Ellie closes her eyes. She tells herself that she’s been sitting still too long, sitting in the same place too long, her focus narrowed to the frail, frantic movements of an injured woman’s finger.

“Hey.”

“Mm?” She blinks; had she fallen asleep on her feet? Constante is holding the door of a waiting lift.

“Thank you, inspector.” He smiles a little, waves her in with an exaggerated flourish. “You didn’t have to wait with me,” she adds, in the silence.

“No.” His car keys jingle lightly in his hand. She reflects that it’s an unusual quality in a policeman, to be so restless. She settles into what still feels like the wrong side of the vehicle, lets her head go back against the seat. Just as she is beginning to resign herself to his silence, he adds: “You’ve had a long day.”

“So’ve you,” she rejoins drowsily. He makes no reply; she knows better than to take the fact that he’s reversing the car as an excuse. She wakes up when the car stops moving.

“Are you all right to walk? You live on a one way street,” he continues, as if she might need reminding. “I don’t want to end the day by getting a parking ticket.”

“No,” she says. “I mean yes — yes, I’m fine.”

“Right.” He’s around the car and holding the door open by the time she’s finished undoing her seatbelt. She glances briefly up at him — braced for some comment, or at least for a smirk that says she’s confirming all his suspicions that she wouldn’t measure up, that she’s not tough enough for the job. His expression is entirely neutral.

“Right,” says Ellie in her turn, and they walk.

The fresh air is restorative, and Ellie reflects that, if she’s being entirely honest with herself, it’s rather nice to pass the inevitable knot of men outside the corner bar without worrying about their usually-inevitable commentary. She steals another sidelong look at her colleague; if he’s secretly gloating about his ability to serve as a human bulwark, it doesn’t show.

“Do you want ice cream?”

“What?”

“Do you want to get an ice cream?” repeats Constante.

“I’m not a child!” She bites her lip. Any such protest, she supposes, was foredoomed to emerge sounding petulant.

“Of course not. So?”

Again Ellie catches her lip between her teeth (she tells herself it’s a habit she should break.) Traitorously, her stomach growls. She’s not sure she can remember the last time she ate. “All right,” she says, and then, feeling churlish: “That would be nice.”

They queue for the van in a surprisingly restful silence. She comes fully awake again when they’re almost at the window, starts fumbling for her wallet.

“Ah-ah,” says Constante. He makes a forestalling gesture with one long-fingered hand. “Allow me. If you tell me your hyphenated family didn’t cut you off without a penny when you joined the force, I’ll be deeply disappointed.” He says _hyphenated_ as though it were an expletive. “Besides,” he adds, “it was my idea.” 

“Thanks,” says Ellie meekly. “Chocolate, please.” 

“Baci,” he says, when he has handed hers over, and for one delirious instant she wonders whether he is flirting with the man behind the counter or, more disturbingly, with her. Then she realizes that it must be the name of the flavor he has ordered, something that looks as though it’s composed of several kinds of chocolate, flecked with nuts. Good to know that the man has at least one indulgence besides Italian sunglasses and ill-timed one-liners.

“So,” says Ellie, when they have extracted themselves from the crowd around the van. “Why did _you_ want ice cream?”

He shrugs without looking at her. “Maybe I felt like celebrating.”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, so I felt like celebrating. Is that in such bad taste?”

“No, it’s… I just wanted to hear you admit it.”

He laughs, but it’s a bitter sound, and Ellie, eating the ice cream he bought her, feels guilty.

“Look,” she says, “we rescued three young women, prevented the trafficking of God knows how many more. You’re allowed to buy yourself an ice cream on the strength of it.”

He is silent for a few moments more. He’s a curiously methodical eater of ice cream, wearing it down into an ever smaller symmetrical shape. “Since I took this job,” he says at last, “it feels as though…”

“Feels as though what?”

“As though I’ve been failing.” It’s practically a snarl. “Too many innocent people dead. Too much blood on my hands. Far too much.”

Ellie digests this in silence. “Well,” she says at last, “we are dealing with some of the worst criminals in Europe, and the most resourceful. That’s bound to be different than dealing with even the most desperate criminals of the Piedmont, surely.” She’s a little afraid that she might have offended him — seemed naive, or patronizing, even. But when she dares to glance over at him, he is regarding her with an expression that she’s almost tempted to classify as fond.

“How did you get so smart?”

Ellie licks a satisfying stripe of chocolate from her ice cream. “Book learning,” she says, because she cannot resist. “Basic mathematics, really.”

He chuckles softly, hands her a napkin. “Ah-ha.”

Ellie applies herself meditatively to the remainder of the ice cream cone. “You’ve had a long day too,” she says at last. If he decides she is unforgivably inquisitive -- well, maybe she is.

“Oh, my blood stream is approximately eighty percent coffee.” Now he does smirk. “You hadn’t heard?”

She laughs. “Inexplicably, no.”

“Comes with the job.”

“Ah-ha,” says Ellie in turn. She watches her napkin flutter into the bin with something like grace, watches him lick chocolate from his thumb. The world still seems a little distant, a little surreal, but not unkind. When she next looks over at him, she finds him watching her.

“What is it?” He merely raises his eyebrows at her. “You looked… worried.”

“Oh.” Again one of those dismissive, fluid gestures of the hand. She wonders if she consciously holds himself back when they’re at work, restraining the idiom of his countrymen. “Nothing.”

“I’m a detective, remember?”

He shrugs. “Ignore me. I’m a moody bastard.”

Despite herself, she laughs again. “Oh, I know _that._ ” She is relieved when he laughs in turn. She wonders if she should tell him that seeing the realities of international trafficking doesn’t really change the fear she lives with that much. She wonders if she should lie instead.

“I’ll be fine,” says Ellie firmly, turning to face him on her doorstep. He looks faintly surprised. “Although,” she adds, “if you wanted to look _particularly_ intimidating as you pass those men at the bar on your way back…”

He makes her an ironically formal little bow, bringing his heels together and inclining his head. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Thanks. And thanks for the ice cream.”

“Thank _you_ ,” he says, and sounds as though he means it. “See you in the morning, Ellie.”

“See you.” Of that, at least, she can be certain.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from Stephen Dunn's poem "Sweetness," which says a lot of things I think (hope) are apt for this ficlet: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/36747/sweetness.


End file.
